Buried in the Farm Bill, which passed yesterday, is something that disallows debate in congress on the President's authority to continue to aid and abed in the slaughter innocent people in the country of Yemen. Not only is this amoral, it goes against our founding fathers' intent on the separation of power. Congress and congress alone declares wars. What a shameful thing for republican congressional leaders to do. Paul 'Widowpeak' Ryan should be tarred and feathered, the chicken hawk twit.

https://www.conservativereview.com/...ick-to-avoid-debate-on-yemen-resolution/

Here is a recent opinion piece by Andrew Napalitano concerning how congress has pizzed away it's power to declare war and why these powers need to be jealously gaurded. He used the example of when Cheeto launched a bunch of cruise missiles into Syria without a declaration of war by congress. The whole situation makes me mad, as the first step to winning a war is declaring that we are in one in the first place. I now firmly believe that the United States has no intention or interest in winning 'the war on terror'. It is meant to be continuous. Through both republican and demorat leadership for the last 17 years we have been in constant foreign conflict that has cost many lives and too much money.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/jud...otten-that-only-congress-can-declare-war

I think you mean IMMORAL

And ABET
And GUARDED

So what.

The President has always been able to dispatch the United States Marine Corps to conflict without congressional approval , and I think since about 2013 that went to all branches of Military

Finn,

your post re: the war on terror shows an embarrassing misunderstanding of the nature and extent of the threat.

It's all about re-election


Osky

NOT buried in the farm bill is a much bigger issue - the continued subsidies we have to cough up for those that don't need it.

War is when the goal is to completely destroy a country. The survivors are starving and have reached a point where they have no will to fight anymore.

When war is not declared, when a third world cesspool of a country is not defeated in going on two decades, what you have is people of no morals sucking up tax dollars with no regard for people being harmed. Their kids don't go, their families don't live in the country the "war" is being waged in, and they get richer.

If we truly were waging a war on terror , on 9/12 there would not have been a Mecca. On 9/13 Riyadh would have existed only in photo's. We are like little hungry baby birds. Swallowing whatever garbage is shoved into our mouths.

What most people don't know is food stamps & most welfare comes out of the Agriculture budget. John Q. Farmer sees a very small part of The Farm Bill.

^^^ This^^ cut out the lazy, worthless and blood suckers leaving only the truly needy and we saved a ton!

I know this shall never come to pass, we have lost our moral backbone.

The only way to cut out lazy bloodsuckers is to cut out all welfare including all buisness subsidies . The truly needy can be cared for by the truly private charities

This exactly. Charity comes from the heart. It's not charity to raise my taxes and forcibly take my money.

Congress has long given up it's war powers, along with many other powers. Constant war is good for warmongers, and it's easy when we don't value human life, even though we claim to be pro-life.

This^^^^^^^^^^. Good post Danny! No one ever seems to want to do the right thing.

The welfare state runs so deep its tentacles will be all but impossible to remove short of a monetary collapse.

This action of adding a totally unrelated bill to another is the swamp at its finest. Too bad our fine Senators from MN couldn't have gotten the wolf language in it, at least it could be construed as agriculturally related.

Great point Steven !!

If you are more enlightened than me concerning the threats we face, why don't you share with us the extent? You sound just like the government; "Oh, we are under severe threat but the details are confidential. Take our word for it."

The words " you have to pass it to see whats in it " come to mind ...... usually that is the procedure with a stool sample. But then again, those folks are full of sh .... so it makes sense.

Are large corporate farms needy? Are milk subsidies the reason there is an overproduction of milk? Are tariffs the reason for a 12 billion compensation to farmers? There are a lot of tentacles reaching out on the farm bill monster. The farm bill is a welfare program for a lot of people but it does keep us in a steady supply of cheap food. That's how I make it acceptable in my pea brain.

It is ironic that our government subsidizes the over production of corn and soybeans that lead to obesity here while on the other hand use the very same bill to authorize the continuation of large scale famine in Yemen through blockades and by helping the Saudis in their proxy war with Iran. 17 million Yemenis at risk of starvation, done with our help.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_Yemen_(2016–present)

The farm bill continues to allow all the land and production to be concentrated in the hands of fewer people, eliminating small holders from the land. And it's about an average of production over a large holding, not, say...the immense production that can happen in a small area of my garden.

The people don't have the right of access to cheap food, everybody should be able to produce their own. If large ag had their way, it would be unlawful to raise a single pig, cow, or chickens by a family.

The farm bill serves the wrong people, and ag in the US is not about feeding the US anyway, it's about shipping product overseas.

Just enough to buy a new truck every 2 years live in a new house away from the hog barns Rid tractors and combines that have more comfort than a Cadillac ,Vacation down south in winter ,Yup a very small part!

how many do you know that do that and in your opinion should they be using horses and binders yet

you sound like you think the war on terror is nothing more than a conventional war that should "winnable", by invading a country and bringing it to its knees.

you lament that we haven't accomplished that after 17 years of fighting. (and you blame that on the Military-Industrial Complex wanting to remain relevant/fully-funded).

If your talking about me white marlin you are 100% correct

Some of you opinionated SOBs should mention your thoughts on 'the free ride the farmers are getting' to the land owners you trap on. See how that works out for you.


I hope you aren't eating, while spouting off about those of us who produce 99% of the food you consume.



Rant over.


Charlie

The japonese all wanted to die for allah too i mean the emporer. A few nukes and they figured it was better to live for him

You are kidding, I hope. None of it gets consumed here.

The sorry sons of dogs attacked our country and so far as i can see the wahabbi’s are still in power

well, I wasn't, but...you'd be wrong, too.

trapper les, If you raise, hunt, fish, or trap for, EVERYTHING you eat, then my post doesn't apply to you.




Charlie

Not everything, but there is a trend in Corporate ag, the trend is to not allow permission to trap , hunt, or otherwise trespass on any of it, and I am seeing that on thousands of acres. There is no one person to talk to, and it's a policy born of liability. So....I don't care for it.

That's a lot of land I once knew. Most of the country around me , and in my county is state land.

most of the Japanese wanted to live.

there are a LOT of muslim extremists who would rather die a martyr than accept you on the same planet as they are.

you going to nuke every country that has extremists factions living within their borders?

Why should we worry about them as long as they're in those other countries? Seems to me we should mind our own business. If they come over here, then it's our problem and we can deal with it in an aggressive manner, even if it means we go to another country to deal with it. Nuke em if we have to. do whatever it takes to get it done quickly, and get back out. Surely we don't need to spend 17 years fighting a bunch of goons with AKs and RPGs. I know an AK can shoot a long ways, but it can't reach over the ocean.

(By the way, you may not like it, but you're much more likely to get shot by a white man than get shot or ran over by a muslim terrorist, so I wouldn't worry too much about what they do over in the great sandbox.)

The launching of cruise missiles at Assad in Syria (a duly elected leader of a sovereign nation) had nothing to do with national security or terrorism. The proxy war in Yeman has nothing to do with national security or terrorism. I do not live in a constant state of trembling fear of radical islamic terrorism and it has nothing to do with our 'war' on it. I do,in fact, believe each innocent human we kill turns more people who didn't hate the untied states before Into someone who feels powerless and angry. I have had a hand in killing a passle of Iraqis who definitely didn't deserve it. As if deserve has anything to do with it. I think about their families daily and wonder about the amount of raw hatred they feel now towards our country. That's been 15 years ago and thousands of Innocents ago.

If you do feel in state of constant fear of terrorism, I would ask you to look around and take a deep breath. If you have a deep seated hatred of Muslims, go fight yourself in any number of mercenary outfits. I do not want my
name attached to the collateral damage that occurs in our little 'war on terror', that really isn't a war at all. I do not want to have to pay for it, and I feel the damages done by it makes us less safe. Of course, that's the whole point of having CONGRESS declare a war, so that I may have my say. As it is now, none of us have any say. The current class of republicans in the congress are too spineless to allow debate. How anyone can think this is good is beyond me.

And where do you think the charities get their financing from?

Why did you enlist?

Surely you knew what armies do.

That may be true with the large corporate farm, but not so with the small family farm. The large corporate farm has forced many family farms out of business in my area.

Yes, how rude to discuss farmers on the teat. We should all realize that if Government withdrew their puppet hand from farmers keister's we'd all starve to death because farmers only produce because government allows them to and subsidizes them. The free market has nothing to do with it
It shouldn't need to be said; but it is perfectly fine to support farmers while not agreeing with the government policy we all suffer with.

I enlisted to defend the Constitution.

Trapper7 private charities get their funding from people who give out of the kindness of their heart, not people who have no choice but to have their hard-earned money taken away from them by force (that's what taxes are.) Taking money from my paycheck to pay for things like universal healthcare, free college, Medicaid/medicare, social security income, etc etc etc etc, is not charity or a good deed, it's theft. I'm not even necessarily saying those things that I listed are bad, but I don't necessarily want to pay for them either. Those who want to pay someone's welfare check can do so directly. (it might change their opinion if they had to do so.)

Since when did the Army do that Finn?

To protect the constitution, your vote is where it's at.

1) I wasn't in the effn Army.
2) defending the Constitution is in the oath of enlistment of all branches of service.

3) another part of the oath of enlistment is to obey the orders of the President and all officers appointed over me. This is WHY it is important to keep and protect the separation of power within the federal government. The President should not have to power to employ the military arbitrarily in nation's across the world without demonstrating a real and direct threat to our national security. Any other forays should be declared as a war by congress after debate. Then the funding can be alloted to pay for it after articulating the goals for the forays through debate.

I understand that's the oath.

But ever since the second WW, i don't see that our wars were fought for that reason. Just my view as to the way our (I'll use Military instead of Army for you) has been used ever since.

Yes, that's why i asked why you joined. Been along time since that was the reason our military has been used for that solely.

Perhaps they should update the oath to say "blindly kill whoever the President fancies with no input from congress or the American taxpaying citizens".

SO Flyin Finn

How is your trapping going? LOL

Finn - I read it and it looks like it applies for another 3 weeks....then we have a new Congress - correct?

How do you propose we fight terrorists? Do we let them come in, shoot up our country and then look for them like France?

Do I fear them - absolutely not - fear is the absence of Faith in God. But, I think we should utilize wisdom..........and I am thankful I am not two blocks down the road, watching peoples last days on this Earth before they are vaporized from a conex.

There is an entire generation of the military today that sit here and take lives in foreign nations.......daily.

You are correct. My point was that the giving still comes from someone regardless of their intention.

Terrorism wasn't invented on 9/11. Terrorism is any act of violence perpetrated in the name of political or religious beliefs. I do not believe terrorism is enough to continue to operate our countries foreign policy in disregard of the Constitution. The tactic of terrorism does not give the president carte blanche to engage our military worldwide without input from the People's respresentatives.
Whether the duration of totally disallowing congressional debate about our involvement in Yemen is 3 weeks or not is irellevant. The fact that this egregious B S was even thought up should bring anyone pause.

With Trump working to shame the Canadians the dairy lobby group was able to get some real increases in programs benefiting the dairy farmers this round. They probably fared better than all the other commodity producers.
As to SNAP which is 80% of the Farm Bill the IGA or Independent Groceries Assn are the big lobby group for those billions as all those dollars flow through their stores and with 40 million on SNAP at some level it is a huge part of the grocery sales annually. Politics makes for real strange bed fellows many times.
Some SNAP Program data

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesal...ps-to-get-jobs-the-majority-already-work

Bryce

BINGO!

Jim

Hey Flyin Finn,listening to NPR this morning I learned about the add on by Paul POS Ryan,to the farm bill.I called his office to ask why he would want to add this to the bill as it has nothing to do with a farm bill.As usual , I could not leave a message as the "leave a comment option" told me my message could not go thru and to try again some other time.Same message I got many months ago when trying to leave a message as his recording says my input is important to him...BS! The message was how can he look at his or anyone else's children , while allowing children and others to be starved and brutally killed.I guess as the BIG CHETTO says ,they(the murdering Saudi's) are a important ally .They make me sick.I hope the ghosts of the dead haunt them to the day they die.
I dont like to rant ,but this is not acceptable ,whoever facilitates this.We should not look the other way to what is happening in Yemen!

They have to eat no matter Only they have to work for grocery's

how many do you know that do that and in your opinion should they be using horses and binders yet



Here you would be hard pressed to find a poor farmer

Yes the amount of debt to assets in American Agriculture is very low. The below link does confirm that.

https://www.agriculture.com/news/business/farmers-debt-to-asset-ratio-is-deceiving-economist-says

Low debt does not make one wealthy if you can't pay the bills. Debt service is the key. The majority of assets on farms is land and land has to be sold to create cash or liquidity. all most all other assets the farms have have limited life and depreciating in value and thus land is used as collateral to borrow to maintain the needed productive assets, replace and repair buildings and buy the items to produce crops and animal products.
The one reason many will survive this downturn is that land is holding value and those that own large tracts of land have the huge advantage of buying out the smaller farms who own land but can't cash flow due to raising families, health care costs etc. If I have a lot of land and equity I can keep buying 10K per acre land because it goes on the books for the same value, my debt to asset ratio does not change much. If and when these land values take a real dive then many will be in very serious trouble. Smaller farmers have markets for their land and if the economy holds job opportunities but it is times like these that change the face of an industry considerably. Consolidation of commodity production is just another example of what is taking place in most industries and sectors with or without government support or inroads.

Bryce

how about Social Security? is THAT enough reason to disregard the Constitution?

how about the income tax? is THAT enough reason to disregard the Constitution?

how about tax courts where you're guilty until proven innocent? is THAT enough reason to disregard the Constitution?

btw...thank you for your service.

Those three examples weren't passed as an add on to a farm bill, the topic of this is about 'war' that isn't really war. It causes unspeakable suffering and is making our country less safe while promoting a larger and less transparent government. I do not like any of the examples you posted, however I like unending 'wars' and faux patriotism even less.

No shortage of $70,000 pickup trucks in front of the local cafe at 9 am here, either.

grass is always greener

thanx for your service Finn

Seems to me that a lot of people mistake people heavily in debt as rich. I could be wrong, but where I'm from, grandpa never had a new truck or new tractor. It was always used---well used. I'm sure he took subsities, but the farmers and land owners are the first people they look to when a new tax is "needed" for schools or whatever else. The taxes on the land today are more than they paid for the whole place in '67. Why don't we drop the land taxes and the subsities?

I would like to explore that idea more in depth, drop agriculture subsidies as well as property tax on lands that are farmed. The trend of "market efficiency" through large scale production is a poor one, concentrating wealth in the hands of few has never been a viable long term solution. Due to the influx of cheap that labor that has occurred and continues to occur small farmers cannot compete with large scale production that uses this cheap labor, if large farms had to pay more than 10 dollars a hour with no benefits other than a old trailer house out back we would not be seeing the dissolution of the small farms at the scale we are seeing it.

I apologize for straying so far from the topic which is the illegal war in Yemen. The war Iraq was not about terrorist, the war in Libya was not about terrorist, the war in Yemen is not about terrorist, if we want to prevent terrorist attacks all we have to do is secure our borders. Almost 200,000 people have died in Iraq due actions caused by the U.S. It was a mistake to kill Saddam, it was a mistake to kill Qaddafi, it was a mistake to try and kill Assad. We allowed the creation of Isis, we destabilized a entire region, our actions over seas have been both illegal and immoral and congresses refusal to act makes them as guilty as the presidents have been.

It's all a product of the welfare state.

You think we'd be fighting these wars if we actually had to pay for them?

Subsidies for businesses?

Artificially low interest rates?

Free phones?

Until we return to sound money practices there will never be meaningful change.

Finn joined the USMC as an infantryman to defend the Constitution.

Lol , OK.

Sell that ideological BS somewhere else .

Then there's this today.................

https://www.vox.com/2018/12/13/18139585/senate-yemen-saudi-arabia-resolution-khashoggi

Which story is correct??????????????????

Hippe do I need to explain the difference between the House of Representatives and the Senate?

Nope, can't i ask which is correct??

Both versions are correct.

My convictions seem to have offended you in some way. Get over it.
Perhaps you can tell me why I joined the Marines more truthfully than I can?

Ohh, i see where ya'll are going with this, let me rephrase to be cleareer.

Which one holds water?

My uneducated guess is that status quo is what will hold water.

Holds water? What do you mean? Isn't a good thing to have debate in the House AND the Senate concerning the massacre in Yemen? That is, after all, their duty.
The Senate is democratically controlled and has no allegiance to the current republican president. The House is controlled by the same party as the president. The house doesn't like to have to do it's politically uncomfortable job of debating 'wars' and has taken steps to stop debate by the house liberty caucus.

Could be, i don't know which has more weight if any of it does.

Doesn't it have to pass both? Or is a Senate resolution different than putting it in a bill?

From your article Hippe:

The White House in particular has pushed back against the Senate’s measure, and if it were to end up on Trump’s desk, it would almost certainly face a presidential veto. Additionally, the House approved a rule on Wednesday that blocks the chamber from taking up any Yemen resolutions before the end of the year, meaning the Senate resolution won’t advance.

Also meaning what the house did was mute.

Steven wins the prize...Status quo.

Finn, both bodies of Congress are controlled by Republicans.

Perhaps not all inclusively but I’m pretty sure it’s close to the same as why the rest of us joined . That could be for the lifelong bennies that come with service to just wanting out of the boring town you/we grew up in . Add in that sharp uniform and you gotta recruit . Myriad of reasons people join . Defending the Constitution isn’t generally one of them .

No, the house made it so that a resolution couldn't be debated. Without debate the representatives do not have to go on record to vote for or against the massacre. It's politically easier this way.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/saudi-ar...ference-kingdom-055528728--politics.html


I still do not believe the Saud family had no prior knowledge of 9/11. I think it likely they contributed in fact.

Another thing most people don't know is farm price support's(because they had political connection's) came long before food stamp's. They drove up the price of food then later had to cough up more tax dollar's to feed the poor that couldn't afford the higher cost anymore. So the tax payer got hit twice. This is what socialist policies do.

The farm bill is just another way for Democrats to get votes. However, when grain leaves the farm, Govt soon has control of it and controls the overseas market. Many, or most farmers would probably rather have their own coop and market their grain overseas. There are people starving, and the Govts use grain as a political weapon.

Hippie,

Didn't you mean to say moot ?

w

You would be correct Walleyed.

Dang grammar Nazis.

A lot of what the house does is muted..by the press

The farm bill is just another way for Democrats to get votes. However, when grain leaves the farm, Govt soon has control of it and controls the overseas market. Many, or most farmers would probably rather have their own coop and market their grain overseas. There are people starving, and the Govts use grain as a political weapon.

With the bulk of the commodity producing states controlled by GOP senators and reps that statement is not accurate. Dems support the farm bill because it offers assistance to millions with lower incomes. Look at the states that receive the highest net farm income from the farm bill and check who their Congressional reps are.

Bryce

Food stamps make up almost 3/4 of the bill , wonder which side that benefits ?

food stamps might be 2/3 of it but I don't see a reason for any of it

Interesting statement so I looked it up.


USDA SUBSIDIES BY STATE%


Honestly surprised

https://farm.ewg.org/progdetail.php?fips=00000&progcode=total&page=states

https://snaped.fns.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/FY2019EstimatedAllocations.pdf

Kansas is expected to pay out 2,478,926 dollars in food stamps in 2019. I can not find a list of farm subsidy payouts by state by year. 1995-2017 as a total but no yearly breakdown. I seriously doubt farm subsidies in KS will be less than 2.5 million next year though.

I(and family) get some of these farm subsidies and I too say get rid of the whole thing. With this new bill a land owner (nothing farmer at that level) can distribute subsidy money to nieces, nephews, and cousins.

Farm subsidy amounts per person will eclipse food stamp's per person pay out. Not to mention all the tax exemption's they get